Helsinki on Michael’s Domain

The Study Voucher

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since I am working at the University of Helsinki (UH), I should probably know a bit more about the upcoming Study Voucher pilot (Finnish: opintoseteli), as UH will offer a lot of courses within this program, including some of mine, e.g. the Recombinant DNA Technology (aka “Cloning”) course. I did some reading, and here is the gist of it:

You know you've been in Finland too long…

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You know you’ve been in Finland too long when… is an old Facebook thread from 2010 , but I have had quite a few of these moments realizing that I would no longer pass as a normal German.

Bad vibes from the new tram

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Our showers were banned from use due to the new tram line running in front of my workplace, the Helsinki University Viikki campus. During the trial runs of the tram, I noticed cracks in the changing room’s wall and the showers. I reported these cracks sometime in February to our janitors. Apparently, the structural damage includes the wastewater pipes, and that’s why we can’t have showers anymore. That is a bummer, especially in the summer. To my understanding, the condition of the university buildings had been documented before the construction of the tram line started. Now the investigation is underway to determine whether the additional damage was caused by the construction or the trial runs (and who has to pay for the damage repair).Since I either cycle or run to work, I need to take a shower every morning. My morning routine has become more difficult since the replacement showers have no place where I can hang my wet clothes and towel for drying. While this causes some inconvenience, there will be more serious consequences if there is a causal connection to the tram operation: The university has expensive research equipment, which is sensitive to vibrations. It is incomprehensible how the top university administration could have agreed with the city of Helsinki to run the tram line directly in front of the University building. In fact, the tram now makes a detour to go along Viikinkaari. The more natural and shorter route would have been about 200 meters South of the current track (along Viikintie), avoiding all this trouble. In order to build the tracks directly in front of Biocenter 1 and 2, millions of additional Euros were wasted on vibration-dampening elements to protect our high-end equipment from vibrations. And perhaps all that money was wasted if it should appear that the efforts were insufficient.

Winter cycling is not for the faint of heart

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Helsinki planned to make private car ownership unnecessary by 2025 . In the image, you can see reason no. #534 why this won’t work: The streets and pavements are kept snow-free in winter, but the bicycle roads are made for storing snow and parking cars. Cycling to the city center is always a pain, but in winter, it’s only for suicidal masochists. About every 50 meters, you encounter an obstacle that requires utmost alertness and creativity to bypass unharmed. Helsinki city center is dying as a result of Covid-19. Good so! The less I have to visit it, the better. The cycling conditions South of Sörnäinen are prohibitively appalling, with the only exception of the 1.3 km long baana between Kiasma and the edge of Ruoholahti (where I rarely need to go). Transport and food are the two biggies when it comes to the responsibility of the individual for global warming. Consequently, Helsinki - a pioneer in sustainable urban development - will increase ticket prices for public transport next year to encourage people to switch from car to bus or metro.

Northern lights everywhere

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Northern lights seem to be normal these days in Helsinki, Finland. The frequency and visibility of the Northern lights are directly correlated with the 11-year solar cycle. It has been known for many hundreds of year that the number of sunspots waxes and wanes in a cyclic fashion with an average time of about 11 years.Even though we are far from the maximum of the solar cycle (which is predicted to be sometime between 2023 and 2026), the number of observable Northern lights in Helsinki seems to be increasing. Maybe the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel was not entirely correct in predicting that cycle 25 would be similar to cycle 24. So far, the number of sunspots is well above the predictions . Cycle 24 was by the way the weakest cycle since cycle 14 (which peaked in 1906).An unpleasant and dangerous side effect of a strong solar activity is a coronal mass ejection (CMEs). A CME happens when the sun spits out large amounts of sun plasma (hundreds to thousands of billion tons). Such ejections happen during the peak of the solar cycle a couple of times per day, but during the solar minimum once every couple of days. Because these CMEs are directional, most of them more or less miss our earth. The magnitude of coronal mass ejections (CME) and thus the intensity and visibility of the Northern lights at lower latitudes is not dependent on the solar cycle, but the frequency of such events is.A big CME can become problematic because it can interfere with our electric grid. A couple of smaller grid outages have already occurred over recent years (e.g. in Denmark and in Canada) as a consequence of smaller CMEs. It is assumed that a big enough CME might be able to take down the electric grid of most of the planet. During the period 2010-2020 (encompassing much of the weak solar cycle 24) the probability of a large CME had been estimated by scientists to be around 12% ( https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2011SW000734 ). The last big CME happened in 1859, and it is known as the Carrington event after the astronomer who first detected it. During the Carrington Event, the “Northern lights” could be seen as far south as Colombia (8° North of the equator; https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06365).Our problem is not that all electronic devices will stop working when a Carrington-size solar storm hits the earth. Rather a few important but difficult to replace pieces of infrastructure will be knocked out. This might initiate the falling of dominoes eventually reaching every aspect of our life. If the CME is big enough, Covid-19 will appear to have been a walk in the park. Even small solar storms can sometimes cause trouble: The same solar storm that caused the Northern lights seen in the image (from Thursday 10th of February) knocked out 40 of the 49 most recently launched SpaceX satellites for good.

Cycling to the airport

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Helsinki international airport is located about 14 km North of our apartment. Actually, the airport is not located in Helsinki, but in its Northern neighboring city Vantaa. Already on my last conference trip before the pandemic I had decided not to use the taxi, but instead to cycle to the airport. This was easier said than done for two reasons:1. There is not dedicated parking space for bicycles at the airport. The whole concept of an airport seems to be built on the premise that nobody ever cycles to the airport. I was asking the Finnavia customer service and they suggested the bicycle parking space of the Hotel Hilton Airport .2. While there are plenty of bicycle roads, the road signs are so infrequent, wrong or missing, that it is impossible to find your way without using the navigation app from your mobile phone. The situation gets worse if you make the trip in the dark which is almost guaranteed since most of the planes leaving to and arriving from continental Europe do so in the early morning or late evening.However, I have cycled to and from the airport three times by now. Every time I try to find my way without the Google Navigator, and every time I loose my way. One problem with the voice navigation is that the Google navigator cannot pronounce any Finnish road names. Another problem is that Google maps are simply not kept up to date. Due to the constant construction, many of the suggested routes are impossible to ride. And it’s not fun to stop every 500 meters and pull out the phone from my pocket, rip off my gloves in order to use the touch screen, which does not react properly because it is raining cats and dogs.The problem with missing and wrong road signs on major bicycle roads is apparently wide spread. A similar impossible area to navigate for cyclists is the Helsinki Central Park. If you know Finnish, you can read about it in the daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat ( https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000008227424.html ). The story is about the futile attempts of a Finnish politician from the Greens Party, who tried to cross the Central Park by bike. Despite millions of Euros being poured into updating the park’s road signs, help from the indigenous population is apparently necessary to make it from one side to the other without getting lost. I always calculate 2 hours for the 14 km ride, which would be enough for me to make it even by foot - provided I do not get lost. I have not found the bicycle parking space of the Hilton Hotel yet. I will have another try next time…

Where the Soviet Union was conceived

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We did a bit of historic sightseeing in summer. In July we went for a city vacation to Tampere, the third biggest city in Finland and the biggest Scandinavian inland city. Tampere has a very industrial history and some important decisions influencing world history have been made here, such as the decision to found the Soviet Union. The latter took place when Lenin and Stalin met each other for the first time in 1905 in the Tampere Worker’s Hall, which today hosts the perhaps (?) only Lenin Museum in the world. Finland was an autonomous part of the Russian Empire at the time and enjoyed more freedom than perhaps any other part of the Empire. For that reason, many of the early communist leaders operated out of the Grand Duchy of Finland.

Master's Programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The University of Helsinki is expanding its repertoire by offering a new International Master’s Programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety . The year 2020 has shown how immensely important pharmaceutical science is for human societies. And this importance will only grow in the future! Besides emerging novel viruses, there are many challenges in front of us. The list below is just a start…* *

Cycling during the Finnish winter

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Finally, snow has arrived in Helsinki! So far I was using my summer bicycle and it does not look nice. My daily commute has only perhaps one kilometer of dirt road, but during the mud months, that’s enough to undo any cleaning in a few seconds and to remove any lubrication from the chain. The mud months are nowadays in Helsinki at least three - thanks to global warming: October, November, and December. Cyclists who advise cleaning one’s bike weekly have just too much time on their hands… Most of the bicycles that are sold are not really built to be used all-season and I am still looking for something, that is really low-maintenance also during the mud months. And I am getting worried about the amount of chain lubrication that I distribute into the environment. I have heard that some cyclists are using biodegradable chain saw lubricant, and I will probably try that out.

HSL indirectly increases ticket prices

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

According to the news, the most popular point of sale for HSL tickets (the R-kioski chain) will start to take a commission for loading travel cards. Travel cards are the RFID cards that you need to use Helsinki public transport.However, in reality, this is a hidden price increase, because HSL decided in 2019 that they will stop paying their distribution partners a fee for their service of loading the travel card. No commercial enterprise can offer services for free, hence this is an indirect price jump initiated by HSL.According to changes mandated by the law, HSL had to start competing the sales of their tickets. However, in their call for tender, HSL announced from now on not to pay any commission to any of their distribution partners. This was entirely their own decision, and hence, it is justified to regard it as a covert but deliberate price increase. Besides, there is not much information about these service fees. I could neither find any specific service fee lists from the S-group nor from the K-group. Only R-kioski’s information was easy to find and concise: R-kioski: kausi: 3.5% of ticket price, max. 5 €; arvolippu: 1€/kpl, kertalippu/vuorokuasilippu 3€ 40 cents.The K-group (K-citymarket, K-market) had announced that the fees would range between 0.5-2€, but still, as of today, I could not find more specific information. I even contacted the S-group, but - typically for such companies - they take their time. I would be surprised to get a reply within a week. Considering the big picture, the negative aspect of making environmentally-friendly transport more expensive is dominating the small improvement of increasing the amount of POS for HSL tickets.Read about it in Finnish in Helsingin Sanomat: https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000006355404.htmlRead about it in English on the HSL pages; https://www.hsl.fi/en/news/2019/hsls-ticket-sales-network-set-expand-beginning-next-year-18242UPDATE (01.07.2020): Meanwhile the number of HSL-operated ticket vending machines has increased. These machines support topping off the balance of your travel card WITHOUT taking a commission. Additionally, you can also now (something that had been promised for years) top off your balance online . The system has still lots of bugs (according to HSL still about 1% of transactions fail), but hopefully HSL will work out these kinks over the next few decades.

PoGo

Sun, 22 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

If you are looking for the identity of PoGo players MarMiJe or JelMicMar in order to organize an exchange or a raid, just e-mail me at michael@jeltsch.org ! Although PoGo was touted to be a community game, it is paradoxically not possible to send any messages to friends within the software itself. That is not a problem for those friends that are part of your real life, but how can you contact a best friend from another country, with whom you have exchanged presents every single day for 3 months?

No quantum leap towards a car-free city

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The public transport company of the Finland’s capital region (HSL) has moved to a new fare system . The system was previously based on the city borders. This was unjust: A one-kilometre trip cost you more than 4 Euros if it happened to cross a city border while a 20-km trip (e.g. from Lauttasaari to Vuosaari) might have been only 2.2 €. Now the capital region is divided into concentric zones around the city center of Helsinki and the fare is determined which and how many zones you are entering during the trip. The trips are paid with an electronic travel card, which can be loaded with “time” (weekly, monthly or seasonal ticket) or “value” (to pay individual journeys).Insignificantly cheaper for most, but not allThe implied promise was that the system does not get more expensive, but this is obviously not true for everybody. For those people that use single tickets, the rise is noticeable. The price of a single ticket within the AB zone rose from 2.2€ to 2.8€ which is more than 27%. On the other hand the ticket is now valid for 80 minutes (instead of 60 minutes) and the region that can be travelled with the new ticket has expanded (mostly into the Western direction to Espoo). However these additional improvements are relevant only for a limited number of customers since the bulk amount of journeys stay within 60 minutes and within the Helsinki area of the AB zone. Moreover, the single tram-only tickets have been abolished. These tram tickets were much cheaper then the regular tickets that entitle you to ride any type of public transport. There are several media stories about the loosers of the ticket reform in the Finnish press, e.g. at Talouselämä: https://www.talouselama.fi/uutiset/hsln-lippu-uudistuksen-haviajat-ratikkamatkustajat-kolmannen-vyohykkeen-kautta-kulkevat-ja-vain-helsingissa-matkustavat/703ca51a-c6b8-3b71-9804-9f35ad89eeaa . PromisesMy own public transport expenses have been sharply rising (by about 25%) as I primarily used single tickets within the Helsinki part of the AB zone. This wouldn’t be a big issue if HSL had kept its promise to offer a substantial discount on users that keep the auto-renewing subscription ticket valid for a year or longer. However, I cannot even find this promise any more on the HSL website. When I asked the customer support of HSL, they told me that they are working on the implementation of such a discount, but they cannot say when it will be ready. This reminded me of the previous fare system update, when HSL promised to introduce a supplementary ticket for owners of monthly tickets valid within Helsinki in order to extend its range without the need to buy a full-price ticket for the whole greater Helsinki Region (“seutulippu”).No quantum leap towards a car-free cityWhile overall perhaps a tiny step into the right direction, the fare-system renewal is far from an attractive offer for car drivers to become public transport users. Much more courage and bigger steps are needed if Helsinki seriously wants to make private car ownership pointless by 2025 . For families with children living in the C zone, the car is even financially still too competitive compared to public transport (ABC ticket for 2 adults & 2 children for one year: ~3500€).

ChemBio Finland

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The biyearly ChemBio Finland event at the Helsinki Fair Center is taking place on this week’s Wednesday and Thursday. I presented our key project at the booth of the Academy of Finland ( http://www.aka.fi/fi/akatemia/media/Ajankohtaiset-uutiset/2019/tervetuloa-suomen-akatemian-osastolle-chembio-messuille/) . Many people showed up to listen to our work on how to move in-vitro antibody generation technologies into the 21st century using synthetic biology and Crispr.

Finland: Paradise for cross-country skiing

Sun, 03 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

At the moment, Finland is a paradise for cross-country skiing. Lots of snow and thousands of kilometers of cross-country ski-tracks (in the capital region almost 1000 km, most of which are easy to reach by public transport). A 13 km circular track starts just in front of my apartment at the old city district (Vanhakaupunki), and the picture for this post has been taken from this track. My sister Claudia maintains an excellent blog about Helsinki ( https://claudiashelsinki.com ) which mainly targets tourists and her last blog post featured cross-country skiing in Finland (and specifically in Helsinki). Her blog is very informative for everybody who wants to visit Finland and specifically Helsinki. However, Claudia writes in German ( https://claudiashelsinki.com/2019/02/02/langlaufparadies-helsinki-und-finnland ), but of course, there is Google Translate, which makes the information available, albeit it sometimes hurts: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fclaudiashelsinki.com%2F2019%2F02%2F02%2Flanglaufparadies-helsinki-und-finnland%2F

International Vascular Biology Meeting 2018 organizational feedback

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As member of the local organizing committee for the IVBM 2018 , I was asking conference participants for direct feedback. I received lots of praise, which I do not want to iterate here. If we are ever going to organize a large international conference again, here are the things that we should do differently next time. Maybe this list can also help other first-time organizers of large, international conferences. If this list gives you the impression that the conference was badly organized, you would be mistaken! All the important stuff worked smoothly and some of the issues below were solved before any of the participants noticed. However, there is always room for improvement of the details! And - as always - some of the issues were out of our control as we had outsourced some of the work, most notably to Confedent International . And some decisions were a compromise between the optimal and what the conference budget could accommodate. I also encourage you to contact me if you want to add something to this list; it could make things better in the future!

IVBM 2018 & 2020 (poster, talk, and virtual poster walk through)

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

IVBM 2018The International Vascular Biology Conference 2018 in the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki has been a big success so far. We received lots of positive feedback for the organization from the participants. Also my talk (“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Proteolytic Processing of VEGF-C”) and my poster received good attention.Below the poster as a PDF download.IVBM 2020The IVBM 2020 in Seoul, South Korea, moved completely online. Unfortunately, some talks are only available for a very short time (one day), and I missed already a few of those. A physical conference has the advantage that it makes sure that you can pay full attention to the event. An online event has to compete with many other issues that are trying to grab your attention.

Running on the Baltic Sea

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For a change, I did my running training last weekend on the Baltic Sea. After two weeks of Siberian cold here in Helsinki, I reckoned that the ice cover on the Baltic Sea was thick enough to be safe for running. That’s one of the few attractions of the Helsinki winter. If you want to get to know more about Helsinki and Finland, have a look at my sister’s blog. Unfortunately, the blog is in German, but maybe I can convince her to make it bilingual: https://claudiashelsinki.wordpress.com/

20th International Vascular Biology Meeting in Helsinki, Finland

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The 20th International Vascular Biology Meeting 2018 (IVBM2018) will take place in Helsinki, Finland on June 3-7. Registration has opened ( https://b3p.it.helsinki.fi/IVBM/ ) and I hope to see you in Helsinki in June! I have been living here in Helsinki for about 20 years, hence feel free to ask me anything! If I cannot answer, I at least know who knows the answer.

FPLC Protein purification course

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Eight postgraduate students registered for the FPLC protein purification course , which took place in December. If I learned anything, than that protein purification during a course should be done ALWAYS with a protein and a protocol, that has been used before successfully MANY times. Student-provided proteins are a great source for learning, but the time restraints of a course format did not allow us to finish the purification of these proteins during the course.Technical Problems with the new Äkta Avant 25In addition, the Äkta Avant 25 , that we newly purchased from GE Healthcare this summer, broke TWICE during the course. First the controlling computer broke (RAID failure). HP delivered the replacement drive within 24 hours and after the RAID had rebuilt itself, we could continue the course. However, during the first run after this incident, the Äkta ran into an overpressure problem. We identified a faulty flow restrictor as the cause, but we did not want to continue as we have had severe problems with air bubbles in previous runs. Therefore we performed the runs on the old Äkta Explorer 100 . GE Healthcare quickly had their service engineer check out the system, but since he did not have a spare with him, we had to wait until Monday 14.12. until the Äkta Avant was again fully functional.What we purified: soluble VEGFR-3 (VEGFR-3/Fc) and HepsinWe did purify soluble human VEGF receptor-3 (the first three domains of its extracellular domain connected to the constant Fc part of human IgG). This is a purification that we have done many times. It is equivalent to the purification of antibodies using Protein A sepharose.We had prepared in advance conditioned cell culture medium. We produce most of our proteins in insect cells (mostly Drosophila S2) and the VEGFR-3/Fc had been secreted by the S2 cells into the medium after induction of the metallothionein promoter with 1 mM Cu2+ for about 4.5 days. The preparation of the medium for purification consists only of 1) getting rid of the cells by centrifugation and 2) filtration to remove precipitates and other small particles that might clog the column. There is no need to adjust the pH.Rapid neutralization after low pH elution IS IMPORTANTWe ran the medium over a disposable 5-ml HiTrap recombinant Protein A column over night at about 1ml/min and eluted with a low pH buffer. The eluted 2-ml fractions were immediately neutralized with 400µl 1M Tris pH 8.5. Here we made a small mistake during one of the two purifications. GE Healthcare had not released the casettes for the 5-ml-collection tubes (they still have not done so even though they did promise them already for September 2015) and we used 15-ml Falcon tubes to collect 2-ml fractions, into which we had pre-aliqotted 400 µl of the neutralization solution. However, the mixing in these tubes was not efficient and the prolonged exposure to low pH resulted in a partial damage to our protein. This can be seen when comparing the size exclusion chromatograms of Group 2 versus Group 4: For Group 4 the first peak (aggregated protein) is much larger and more heterogenous compared to the same peak for Group 2.In fact, when VEGFR-3/Fc is eluted by low pH from protein A columns, it always precipitates at higher concentrations soon after elution, but dissolves again upon neutralization. This did not happen in the fractions 5.A.3 and 5.A.4 (Group 4) due to the inefficient mixing of elutate and neutralization buffer in the 15-ml-Falcon tube (the fraction size of 2 ml was probably to blame as well; 1 ml would have been better). During the run for Group 2, we removed the tubes immediately after the run had ended and thereby mixed the buffers, while for Group 4 the run finished during night time and the eluate remained largely unmixed until the morning.Alternatively, we could have eluted with a highly concentrated chaotropic salt at near-neutral pH (which we’ll do next time in case we have an automated run where the elution happens in the middle of the night). Pierce offers a (proprietary) “gentle” elution buffer of pH 6.6. I don’t know the Pierce buffer composiiton, but it is a highly concentrated solution of some chaotropic salt. 3M potassium/sodium thiocyanate or 4M magnesium chloride in buffered solutions around pH 7 are frequently used chaotropic salts for this purpose.HepsinThe student-provided proteins were challenging. First, their concentrations in the starting material was very low. While we can see clearly the protein when the VEGFR-3/Fc conditioned medium is run on a PAGE gel and stained with Coomassie, no such band is visible for the Hepsin. In addition, it appeared that a significant fraction of the protein seems not to contain the histag (anymore) and therefore is not captured with the first purification step. The fraction of Hepsin-H6 that does bind to the Ni2+ sepharose elutes already at an imidazole concentration of 20 mM, which makes washing the column challenging. The Hepsin with the longer histag (H10) survives the 20 mM imidazole wash, but it suffers also from low expression levels.Below are the chromatograms of the individual runs and the annoteded images of the Comassie-stained PAGE gels. The detailed protocol for the operation of the Äkta Avant 25 is still under preparation…

1 hour 53 minutes 6 seconds

Tue, 13 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

21.0975 kilometres in 1 hour 53 minutes and 6 seconds, 3011th of 12120 runners in my age group, almost 5 minutes faster than last year: Helsinki City Run 2014 .

Online food shopping in Helsinki

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If we want to replace our Saturday’s general food shopping trip with online ordering, there seem to be only two major options in Helsinki ruoka.net and Alepa kauppakassi . We had been using ruoka.net before, but we stopped, because their online store was very user-unfriendly and the prices quite high. But maybe we should have another look, because Alepa kauppkassi’s quality of service has deteriorated during the last few months.We have been ordering our food via Alepa kauppakassi already for more than a year, but now that I have broken my leg this service is essential for us. Unfortunately, it has never been working without problems. E.g. when they delivered a week ago, they forgot completely to deliver all the frozen foods that we had ordered. They had forgotten the frozen food already once before, but back then, it was promptly delivered at the next possible time. Not so this time: It took them one week to deliver the rest. And we had to complain multiple times before anything happened. And what was the compensation? One lousy free delivery (worth 6.9€). But today, things got even worse:Let me please reliably know if the delivery will be lateYesterday, my wife placed an order for about 150€ and the delivery was supposed to happen today between 9-12 am. However, until 1:30 pm nobody had been ringing the door bell and I skyped my wife whether she had received any SMS or phone call. She had received an SMS at 8:30 am that the goods had been gathered and were awaiting delivery. Later she had received a call attempt from an unknown number while she was talking on the phone with her doctor. Later it appeared that this had probably been the delivery driver trying to announce that he would be late. However, what should my wife have done? Call back an unknown number? This is one of the things that went wrong. The driver should have sent an SMS message or called again.**Stuck in traffic in Helsinki? - Give me a break!**When I called the customer service at 1:30 pm, they promised they would figure out why the delivery is late and call me back asap, what they did. They said that the delivery was delayed due to the traffic situation and that he will be delivering in about 15-20 minutes. In fact, at 13:50 the food was delivered. Some stuff was temporarily finished and therefore missing from the delivery, but more importantly, all frozen foods had already melted. No surprise, as they were simply delivered in a plastic bag. From 8:30 am to 1:50 pm is 5 hours and 20 minutes - long enough for pizza to melt completely.Traffic jams on Wednesday between 9 and 12 am in Helsinki? You must be kidding! You can pull this argument in New York or London, but in Helsinki? The driver told me that the delivery started only at 11:30 am… Apparently there was simply nobody available to start the delivery in time.**Don’t sell stuff you don’t have!**It is difficult to understand, why an online store would list food items that it cannot deliver. For example we have ordered already 5 or 6 six times frozen strawberries (including this order), but every single time the berries were not delivered due to “temporary shortage”. Such a situation is called “permanent shortage”. It is bad practise to list food items in the online store that the shop is never able to deliver. It makes frustrated customers.Some tips against the melting of frozen goodsNow for the melted foods: This is dangerous and avoidable. It can be avoided by not delivering too late (or by not gathering too early). If this overstrains the logistic capabilities, there is still another option: a styrofoam box and a few cooling elements. I was talking to the driver and he told me that he started delivery at 11:30 am, which was 3 hours after the food had been gathered. Why that late? According to the driver they are permanently understaffed.Customer serviceAlready during the first phone conversation I clearly indicated that my patience was already very stretched and that I did expect a decent apology and compensation. I received a phone call a bit later by Janina Henttilä (I hope I spelled her name correctly), asking me whether they can replace the frozen foods with a new delivery today in the evening between 7 and 9 pm. Yes, that would be ok. However, again a bit later, I got another call, telling me that they have run out of one of the pizzas that I have ordered and whether I want partial delivery today and the rest tomorrow or rather everything at once tomorrow. Tomorrow everything at once would be ok. Again a bit later, I got another call - they don’t have that pizza at all and whether I want a similar type. No, I don’t want replacements done by other people for me and we always check the box “don’t replace products by similar ones when the exact product is temporarily not available”. Bad things can happen: a Dr. Oetger pizza might get replaced by a Saarioinen pizza . That might be OK for some people but not for me. So I asked them to call back later, when I had the possibility to check from the computer what replacement options they offered. We also were promised some unspecified compensation for all the trouble. I was also asking for some names higher in the hierarchy to complain to, because I am very well aware, that the problems must be structural and not only due to somebody not doing his or her job. I got two names and two phone numbers which I will call once this online food shopping adventure is over.P.S.: The replacement delivery was scheduled the next day between 9 and 12 am and it really happened. The “compensation” (a 20€ gift card for any shop of the S group ) arrived timely 2 days later.P.P.S.: I did the next online shopping exactly one week later. This time delivery was in time (sheduled between 9 and 12 am, delivered at 10:30 pm). Almost everything was ok except from the bill which overcharged us by 61 cents: They billed one 250g frozen strawberry bag (2.3€) instead of one 200g raspberry bag (1.69€). I really didn’t feel like complaining again. It just shows how hard it is for them to get it right…

Old City Museum Power Plant

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Ever since we have moved into our new apartment, we have been subscribing to environment-friendly electricity (“Ympäristöpennisähkö” from Helsingin Energia ). We decided to “receive” the energy from a hydropower plant which is located near our house at the rapids of Helsinki Vanhakaupunki . The Vanhakaupunki hydropower plant started its operation in 1876 and operated about 100 years before it was shut down about 40 years ago. Supported with EU money the power plant was restored and resumed operation in the year 2000 as a museum power plant which is free for visitors during the summer months.Buying environment-friendly electricity is mostly a statement towards your electricity supplier. All what it means is that your supplier is buying some certificates that guarantee that somewhere electricity is produced environment-friendly. Electricity is electricity is electricity. Once it is in the grid, there is no way to distinguish between electricity from nuclear power plants or coal-burning power plants and wind- or water-generated electricity. Physically, you get most of the power from the closest source. If you buy ecological electricity and you live close to a nuclear power plant, you’ll get most of your power from there whether you like it or not. Thus we have actually real chances to get some of our electricity from the museum power plant next to our house. That is: if it was working.The generator broke about two years ago and a spare part had to be ordered from Austria (the generator axle needed to be custom made). The spare part had been delivered in 2009, but for some reason, the generator was still not fully operational.The power plant’s operation is dependent on the water level in the Vantaa river. Low water levels were to blame e.g. during summer of 2010, but the generator has mostly not been operating even when when water levels did permit its use (the statistics can bee seen here ).I visit the power plant frequently together with my son and thus I can say that during the approximately 10 visits during 2010 we have never found the generator turning. In 2007 it was turning almost every time we visited. Even more disappointingly, the museum staff was only able to confirm that something must still be wrong with the machine despite the replacement axle; but they were not able to tell us any details.Most surprising is the fact that nobody from the operating company told us anything, although we were allegedly receiving our energy from this power plant. Therfore on August 24th I wrote a e-mail to Ulla-Maija Alander from Helsingin Energia asking about the situation and encouraging to make more information available for their customers. After not receiving any answer for three weeks I resent the mail on Sept. 15th and after waiting for another three weeks I finally phoned. During the phone conversation I was promised an answer which came via e-mail:Dear Mr Jeltsch,first I would like to apologize for not responsing to your feedback earlier, and also thank you for your interest in Vanhankaupunginkoski power plant.The reason why the generator is not operating at the moment is - as you correctly assumed - the lack of water, as it often has been. However, there has also been technical problems since the generator was repaired in May 2009. This year, the lack of water caused “zero production” in January and February. In May and June, unfortenately, there were problems in the turbine that prevented the use of the generator. After these problems were solved, the water level sunk again in August.I don’t know if the demonstration use has been a daily procedure, but I will get back to you as soon as I find more information about that and the reasons why this may have been changed.You are absolutely right about the lack of information on our website and towards our valuable Ympäristöpenni customers. And you are right that it is inexcusable. We clearly have to improve our performance. We will.Thank you for the feedback!Best regards,Anna-Maria AsellProduct ManagerHelsingin Energia00090 HelenKampinkuja 2, HelsinkiTel. 09 617 3168anna-maria.asell@helen.fiwww.helen.fi

Customer rights at Prisma Viikki

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This January our Esprit/Sigikid Frog broke. It’s a musical toy to keep our baby occupied during diaper changes. It stopped playing its Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf melody after winding up its mechanism by pulling on the string that comes out of its bottom.The mechanism has been probably been operated about 300 times. Right from the date of purchase, there has always been a peculiarity with the winding mechanism, notably that when pulling on the retracted string, an initial resistance could be noticed that required very strong pulling to overcome. However, after the initial resistance, the string was easy to pull and we did not pay attention to this anymore after we got accustomed to it. Until the mechanism failed to operate after pulling. That’s when we realized that maybe it should not have been all that difficult to start pulling and maybe this was indicative of an initial problem that only manifested itself after sufficient usage.This frog was by no means cheap. In fact, the Finnish Prisma shop (Viikki branch) took a large margin of profit by selling it for almost 19 Euros while it can be purchased for less than 9€ online ( Baby-Markt or 12,97€ at amazon.de ). This, the EU directive that regulates such cases of seller liability ( Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 May 1999 on certain aspects of the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees ) and the fact that it is a product designed (but not made) in Germany by Sigikid made me reason that I should get it replaced without any trouble after a mere 8 months of use (we really started to use it only after the birth of our daughter in June).However, what I encountered at the customer desk of Prisma Viikki , was completely different from my expectations. First I was told that this product has a warranty of 6 months and thus I won’t get it replaced. Since I insisted on a formal return of the product, the employee filled out the return form for me. I have to mention that the conversation went in Finnish which is not one of my strong languages. And retrospectively I realize, that I should have filled out the form myself (in English) to make my point that the product was most likely defective right from the start.A few days later I received a phone call where the “you don’t get the defective product replaced” was repeated. I mentioned the EU directive which requires 2 years of seller’s liability. And since Finland is a member of the EU I should be able to exercise my EU-given rights. The shop representative at the other end of the phone line surprisingly admitted that she does not know of such directive and that she would contact the Finnish customer protection services and come back to me later.Again a few days later, I had another long phone conversation about the topic where I finally had the opportunity to express the situation in detail in English. Actually it appeared that the Finnish law doesn’t have any time limit for seller’s liability, but handles every case individually. This could be bad or good for me, depending whether you argue that such a musical toy’s expected lifespan is substantially more or less that approximately 11 months. In the end of this conversation the Prisma representative admitted that the situation might be different from what she originally perceived.Again a few days later I received another call from somebody else who ask me to submit a detailed description of my request in written form, which I did via e-mail yesterday (March 9th). Now I am waiting for a mutually satisfying resolution. I actually think that the mechanical problem is probably minor and had the failure to function occurred a bit later I probably would have “operated on the frog” to fix it myself. This case has already consumed an unreasonable amount of my time and alone for this reason the incident will probably (independent of its outcome) leave me with some uneasy feeling about Prisma’s customer care.Comparing goodwill (is there a closer English translation of the German word “Kulanz”) of sellers between Finland and Germany makes most German expatriates here in Finland nostalgic and home-sick. About half of the money I spend, I spend in the exact same Prisma Viikki shop that refused to replace the Esprit/Sigikid frog. Luckily, we live exactly half-way between the Arabia shopping center and Prisma Viikki.UPDATE (April 14, 2010): Today - after more than 2 months - the importer sent us the repaired frog.

Growing tomatoes on a balcony in Finland

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

We live in Helsinki , Finland. Helsinki is something like 60° North and the climate is anything but favorable for anything except mushrooms, blueberries and reindeer lichen . But our apartment has a glassed balcony facing South and so I thought it should be possible to grow some veggies there. I seeded tomatoes inside in mid-April, which is a time when the temperatures can easily fall below 0°C and also snow storms are not unheard of during this time of the year.Not enough lightThat was too early as there was still not enough light and rank growth was the consequence: very thin, fragile and tall plants trying to reach more light. I don’t think it is very ecological to use artificial light, but it would have helped in this case. The other mistake was that the pots we used were much too small. We used 2 and 5 liter pots, harboring each 2 plants. Next time we’ll only use one plant per 10 liter pot. However, when the temperatures went up in the middle of May, we transferred the tomato plants to the balcony. Because now there was plenty of light they grew very fast and soon there were lots of yellow flowers.Pollination troublesHowever, there were no tomatoes. It appears that tomatoes need either insects or wind for pollination, none of which we had on our glassed balcony. To replace the wind one can shake the plants to release the pollen. Once we did that and opened the glass windows they promptly developed fruits. The tomato species was of the indeterminate type - meaning that it kept constantly growing and producing flowers. We had to support them with strings attached to the balcony ceiling. The one thing that was most laborious was the watering and fertilization. Since the plants had very little soil, they needed to be watered daily and fertilized twice a week with a dilute fertilizer. In addition we had to put the balcony blinds into use during the sunny hours of the summer days to prevent the plants from frying. Lots of work for a few tomatoes. I agree with Wise Bread that growing your own fruits and veggies is more of a hobby than a way to save money.Superior tasteAdmittedly, the tomatoes from our balcony taste better then those from the grocery store; my four year old son said today he only eats self-grown tomatoes. Especially in the Northern part of Western Europe, many people have never tasted really good tomatoes. The deprecatory name for a tomato that has no taste whatsoever is (in German language) “ Hollandtomate ”. I guess the lack of taste is due to the optimal conditions they are grown in, maybe also the specific strain. E.g. in order to develop full flavor, tomatoes need also dry periods. Dry periods, however, result in smaller fruits. And because commercial producers are paid by the kilogram their tomatoes never see any dry periods. Taste is much more difficult to measure than weight. The lack of flavor is probably not due to artificial fertilizer (as I suspected before). We used artificial fertilizer and the result was still superior to everything commercial I have tasted this year.YieldI harvested alltogether more than 70 tomatoes (about 7 kg) from the plants. The harvest started quite late (in the beginning of August) and lasted until mid-October, when I picked all tomatoes including the green ones to prevent them from freezing. All green tomatoes finally ripened inside and a few managed to rotten. The last own tomatoes we ate in the end of November. Even those that ripened after picking had a much better taste than the stuff from our supermarket.

The Molecular/Cancer Biology Lab 10 years ago

Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I cleaned my computer files and I found this historical photo collage…

And here is another historical document. It’s an article about the Alitalo laboratory in the “Yliopisto” magazine from September 2002:

More of Tobi's kindergarten songs (Finnish X-mas songs)

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

METSÄMÖKIN TONTTU

Kas metsämökin ikkuna, sielt tonttu ulos kurkistaa.Ja jänö laukkaa laputtaa ja oveen kolkuttaa:Auta, auta pyydän sua, metsämies kun vaanii mua.Sulle suojan tarjoan siis kätes ojenna.

Tobi's kindergarten songs

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Pikkuiset kultakalat

Pikkuiset kultakalat lammessa uipikkuinen kalaäiti huolestuiuikaa, uikaa jos osaatteja he uivat ja uivat sen uskotteHop-hop-däbä-däbä-hop-hop-huiHop-hop-däbä-däbä-hop-hop-huiHop-hop-däbä-däbä-hop-hop-huiJa he uivat ja uivat sen uskotteAika isot kalanpojat lammessa uiaika iso isäkala huolestuiuikaa, uikaa jos osaatteja he uivat ja uivat sen uskotteHop-hop-däbä-däbä-hop-hop-huiHop-hop-däbä-däbä-hop-hop-huiHop-hop-däbä-däbä-hop-hop-huiJa he uivat ja uivat sen uskotteJättiläis kultakalat lammessa ui…Mini, mini kultakalat lammessa ui…

Helsinki City marathon 2003

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:00:00 +0000

I took part in the Helsinki City Marathon .

Placement	Nro.	Surname	Given name	Club	Series	½ marathon	Brutto time	Netto time
1857	3921	Jeltsch	Michael	Helsinki	Miehet yleinen	2:04:22	4:10:02	4:06:50

The Alphabet of Angiogenesis

Tue, 01 Jun 1999 00:00:00 +0000

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